A New Era in F1

The 2010 Formula 1 season will be very different to the last, there are a few new teams, a few new faces but there is also a new set of rules to consider.

I might be getting ahead of myself as the new season doesn’t start for another month but the Formula 1 buzz has already begun with the release of all the 2010 car specs, liveries, teams etc.

There are 4 new teams joining F1, here’s the lowdown on my favourite two:

Virgin Racing Virgin Racing’s car for 2010, the VR01, is said to be a new breed of race car as it’s the first F1 car to be exclusively designed by CFD (computational fluid dynamics) computer technology. Virgin have got two very promising young drivers, and old rivals in GP2, Timo Glock and Lucas di Grassi. If you want a chance to name Timo or Lucas’ cars, go the website by clicking here.

Lotus F1 Racing There has been a lot of hype about the return of Lotus to F1, well there’s one main difference… they’re run by a partnership of the Malaysian Government and a consortium of Malaysian Entrepreneurs called 1Malaysia F1 Team. Other than that great racing pedigree, Lotus have another thing going for them and that’s their drivers. They’ve got the great experience of Italian Juano Trulli and the very talented ex-McLaren man Heikki Kovalainen.

Mercedes GP Petronas Now technically this isn’t a new F1 team, Mercedes took over Brawn GP and this is the result. Although this is obviously a very exciting prospect for 2010, what with Brawn GP winning last years drivers and constructors championships and of course the fact that one of the best Formula 1 drivers of all time has come out of retirement to race. With Schumy being backed up by Nico Rosberg and should still have a great car, they could be realistic title contenders.

Rules There are going to be quite a few rule changes for 2010, all found here.

The main one I’m going to focus on is the new points system. Now that there will be 26 cars instead of 24, 25 points will be awarded for 1st place, 18 for 2nd, 15 for 3rd and then 12, 10, 8, 6, 4, 2 and then 1 for 10th place.